Developing Students' Pragmatic Competence In High School English Vocabulary Teaching

Deeply influenced by structural linguistics, the English vocabulary teaching in China has put more emphasis on the size of vocabulary or the literal meaning of words. Although high school students have learned English for at least three years, they cannot express themselves freely in the intercultural communication, thus often resulting in communication breakdown because of pragmatic failure. In that case, does pragmatic failure result from their insufficient vocabulary size or their poor pragmatic competence? Is there any connection with English teaching? To explore the answers to these questions, the author conducts this study under the framework of related theories about pragmatic competence, the concept of word meaning and the concept of context.The present study was conducted among 67 second-year students of one high school and 12 English teachers who taught them and three instruments, namely two tests and one interview, were employed for data collection. 67 students participated in the vocabulary size test and the pragmatic competence test and 12 English teachers participated in the interview. One test for vocabulary size is to test high school students'vocabulary size and the other for pragmatic competence is to test their general level of pragmatic competence. The interview for English teachers is conducted to know about the English vocabulary teaching of high schools. This study serves three objectives:⑴To test high school students'vocabulary size and their general level of pragmatic competence;⑵To investigate the relationship between vocabulary size and pragmatic competence;⑶To find out the main causes of students'pragmatic failure from the aspect of vocabulary teaching. In order to make the investigation as objective as possible, all the data are collected and analyzed by SPSS 13.0.The results reveal that students command a large vocabulary, but their pragmatic ?competence is still at a poor level on the whole. Secondly, students'vocabulary size is not directly connected with their pragmatic competence. The development of pragmatic competence was not concurrent with the increase of vocabulary, and with the increasing in vocabulary, there was no corresponding improvement in pragmatic competence. However, through the Pearson correlation analysis between vocabulary size and pragmatic competence, a conflicting result is revealed and it shows that vocabulary size and pragmatic competence are in a position of moderate and positive correlation. That is, vocabulary size is the foundation of the development of pragmatic competence and linguistic deficiency can also give rise to communication breakdown. Finally, teaching vocabulary out of context and lacking sufficient culture input and communicative output are the main causes of students'pragmatic failure.Through data analyses and study findings, feasible ways of cultivating students'pragmatic competence in the vocabulary teaching are discussed. Students'pragmatic awareness can be improved in the English vocabulary teaching and their pragmatic competence to use vocabulary can be developed by applying context theory, designing communicative activities and introducing cultural background knowledge. It is sincerely hoped that this study can shed light on the development of high school students'pragmatic competence, and more implications may be produced on further studies in this field.